


Wicked oneshots

by bluegreen5672



Category: The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire, Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluegreen5672/pseuds/bluegreen5672
Summary: Wicked oneshots, taking place at various points in the book





	Wicked oneshots

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a thing about elphaba's early years in quadling country. not a lot of action, just practice.

“Stay here,” Frex leaned down, a curl of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. He lay a hand on Nessa’s small, bare shoulder, his palm covering the expanse of skin from which an arm would usually come. Elphaba, who held the still infantile girl, watched him with luminescent eyes and blinked confirmation. Her father straightened, adjusting the ties on his worn jerkin, and scuffed his boot a little, unsuccessful due to that there was no surface uncovered by the thick, gluey mud. Elphaba watched as he aimed his eyes skyward- the dusk was the churning color of rust- and closed them, briefly, offering an unknown prayer to an Unnamed God. He then turned and walked towards the gathering of people waiting for him near a makeshift stage, their jutting features hopeful with a primitive reverence as he splayed his arms in preparation for a sermon. Elphaba pet one of her baby sister’s ringlets absentmindedly, twisting it around her finger. The younger girl began to cry, and Elphaba rocked her back and forth, patting her back, the gesture practiced and efficient. Their mother was sick at home, her drunken fits giggly and catastrophic- Elphaba usually preferred to stay away. Turtle Heart the girl did like, quite well, for he was honest and warm, and he adored their family with a sort of holy devotion that they returned. He was often with Frex or Melena, but today he was nowhere to be found- Elphaba searched for his familiar tawny hair and long legs in the muddle of people, but to no avail.  
Bored of Frex’s sermon and her crouched position in the mud, Elphaba made to move, shrugging away her father’s command. Her arms aching, she pushed herself to her feet (again, Nessa squalled, and Elphaba shushed,) and walked in the direction of the main village. The houses were ramshackle things, hut-like in their circularity, made of sticks and clumps of stones and mud, crafted cleverly but with limited resources. Small brooks ran throughout the ground every few feet, weeds and marsh bugs tangled up within the murky water. The dirt ran red and brown, sandy and thick. “Rubies..” people whispered, when they spoke of Quadling country, and the strife that had befallen it. Elphaba, though, saw blood run in the silty water more times than she’d ever seen rubies in her life.   
One fateful afternoon, shortly after their arrival in a new Quadling village, the whole family had walked on the banks of a lake; although Elphaba knew the water was shallow, it was black and green in a way that suggested immeasurable depths. She had shied away, as she always did from wet, but Melena had been straying ever closer to the edges, her sweat-stained gown (once white, it was now, at best, a passable creamish) dragging in the mud. Melena had paid no mind, but continued to hum, her pregnant belly swollen and huge. Tadpoles swirled at her feet as she disturbed the grassy bank. Elphaba had observed her from a safe distance, but no one else seemed to be watching. Frex and Turtle Heart traipsed ahead, the former trying to keep pace with the latter’s swinging gait. Her mother seemed to sway, aware of the lack of attention she was being paid, and both resenting and reveling in it. Intoxicated and stingy after a brief squabble she and Frex had had over walking about, Melena stared into the depths of the lake with a hand on her belly and another on her back. Elphaba averted her eyes from the scene, prowled in the high weeds, pretending she was some sort of beast, a cat sly and unseen in the grass… Her mother’s scream was wracking. It seemed that the world had shattered with the pure horror that the scream contained; it was terrified and insanely pitched. Frex and Turtle Heart had whipped around in an instant, but it was Frex who stopped in his tracks and seemed as though he would scream as well. Turtle Heart came forth, and stared solemnly into the lake; he sighed through his nose sadly, and seemed to try and comfort Melena, who was shaking and had fallen onto her behind, further staining the dress. Elphaba had stood on wobbly legs and darted to where the adults stood and shook.   
There were three bodies; one was facedown, a trickle of red leaking from the back of their head. The other two were glassy-eyed and looked up at the girl with twin misery. Their limbs were beginning to bloat and rot, but they couldn’t have been there for long. Their clothes were tattered, and their hair floated in bloody nimbuses around their heads. Their cut throats were swollen and pussy, blood-drunk bugs floating atop the water in lazy heaps. The third body was a young girl, she couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. A variety of other wounds had been inflicted upon her soggy limbs and torso, and her dress was torn. They were so close that Melena had barely missed stepping on one. Melena, now, seemed to be angry, she was spitting and crying at Turtle Heart, who had gone blank eyed even as he bent to help her; Frex shuddered on the ground, clutching his hands together in a silent but hysterical prayer. Elphaba had shrank away from the water, but remained fascinated by the corpses. They were certainly not the last she would see in Quadling country.   
After that afternoon, Melena seemed to grow more and more spiteful of their surroundings, if she had ever been agreeable. It was unclear who had killed the people in the lake, for it could’ve been anyone from Wizard’s men to a warden to a vengeful Animal, but Melena seemed to blame them all, and Frex most for bringing her to this strange, poor land. It seemed to Elphaba that even when she observed from a window or behind a door her mother and Turtle Heart’s love making that Melena was half-hearted, if not bored. She dried out her stash of pinlobble leaves quickly, and spent her remaining trimester of pregnancy in a haze of anger and respite. The time she had for Elphaba was limited. However, they enjoyed their moments; watching, dissatisfied, Frex’s attempts from afar, admiring Turtle Heart’s lean arms and broad smile. Sometimes they stood in the fields for hours, surveying the growing amount of Quadling workers miles away, mining and hacking and cutting as Melena muttered to herself and her daughter.   
But then she had given birth to Nessa; Nessa was beautiful, even in her armlessness, Nessa was quick to cry and more often scowled then laughed, but she needed Elphaba, and Elphaba needed her.   
She thought about that, in her five year old head, Elphaba did, as she carried her sister and they walked through the village. She wondered if she would carry her for eternity- how Nessa would get on if Elphaba wasn’t there to balance her. They were quite a pair- an armless toddler and a barely older green-skinned girl, traipsing about town or sitting amongst the Quadlings or playing in the expanses of marshland. People turned their large eyes to gaze at them, less commonly with cruelty or distaste as it’d been in Munchkinland, but sometimes with awe or wonder. Another reaction was nothing at all. Quadlings were so used to strangeness, foreignity, violence, that two genetically mixed up children was hardly something to squawk about. Elphaba continued her solemn walk, avoiding the splashes of muddy water and thorny weeds. Most of those who would’ve been outside their houses were at Frex’s sermon, and the others were elsewhere, butchering or slaving or rearing. The streets seemed very empty, and quiet. Ahead was endless muddied grounds, behind was the same. The Wizard had ravaged their population and their resources- and wasn’t Frex here to inspire and defy? Bring hope by way of the Unnamed God? But all Elphaba saw were the miles of dry land, sucked of their rivers, their rubies, and beyond that, the shadows of those working tirelessly, and well, if she’d had the vision of a hawk- beyond there would be the tents of the Wizard and his men, barracks and smatters of green uniforms amongst the brown and red that made up the countryside. A sudden gust of wind picked up, and she shivered. Nessa cried softly in her arms, and, wise beyond her years, Elphaba cooed to her. You’re safe, she thought, as long as those barracks and shadows stay far away.


End file.
